Necropath (23 page)

The wind blew, bitter cold, and at last Vaughan turned and walked into the sanctuary of the warm-wood house.

He lay on his bed and listened to the muted thrum of mind-noise from the city. It was nothing like as concerted as what he experienced on Bengal Station, but he told himself that he could do without it, nevertheless.

He reached for his chora, poured a dose into his beer, and drank.

* * * *

ABSORBED

Jimmy Chandra had expected Vanderlaan, the administrative capital of the northern continent and the largest city on Verkerk’s World, to look something like the cities of Earth with sprawling suburbs and a busy, built up centre. He should have guessed that, with a population of little over fifty thousand, it would be just another version of Sapphire Falls. As he drove into town along the coast road, two hours after setting off at dawn, he wondered if he’d been somehow turned around during the journey and was arriving back in Sapphire. There were a few differences to assure him that he was in Vanderlaan, however: the sea, to the left, filled the bay with a million scales of reflected sunlight, and there were fewer warmwood houses here—for the most part, the buildings were constructed of polycarbon in gold and silver, reflecting the sun like some inland, mirror-image of the bay.

Vaughan lay on the back seat, asleep. As Chandra drove through the city, following directions to the hospital he’d received from the officer in charge of the Essex case, he considered Vaughan and what had occurred yesterday. The telepath’s outburst in Jenson’s house, provoked though he might have been, had struck Chandra at the time as unwarranted and unprofessional behaviour. It suggested a mental instability that had been simmering away under the surface, but never boiling over, for a long time. Chandra had often thought that the root of Vaughan’s depressive attitude had been the insights granted him by his ability to look into the minds of others—Vaughan had almost said as much often enough in the past. Since what Chandra had found on the files in the basement of police headquarters the other day—and in light of something else he’d discovered just that morning—Chandra wondered if his telepathic ability was the sole cause of his depression.

Back on Earth, Chandra had run a visual identity check on Vaughan, and the com-program had come up with a match—fifteen years out of date but still recognisably the man who called himself Vaughan. The original ‘Vaughan’ had lived in Canada back then, an officer in the Toronto police force. That tied in with what Vaughan had let slip once: that he was a Canadian whose parents had died when he was young.

For whatever reasons, Vaughan had fled his past, established himself with a new name and a new identity on Bengal Station.

Chandra had always thought he’d known—as well as he was able—the man who was Jeff Vaughan. He’d realised, now, that he knew very little.

And Vaughan’s obsessive interest in the Elly Jenson case? After their meal last night, Chandra had heard the French windows open. He’d moved into the lounge and looked through the window. Vaughan had been standing in the middle of the lawn, in the snow, staring up at the stars and weeping.

That morning, Chandra had inadvertently stumbled upon what might have been another piece of the puzzle to Vaughan’s past. At dawn, ready to set off, Chandra had knocked on Vaughan’s bedroom door. Five minutes later he’d knocked again and shouted and, getting no response, had opened the door and looked in. Vaughan was sprawled on the bed, fully clothed and asleep. Beside him, spread across the rumpled sheets, were about two-dozen pix of Elly Jenson—miniatures of the graphic that Vaughan had taken from Genevieve Weiss’s studio. Then Chandra noticed something else: not all the pix were of the Jenson kid. Some were of a girl who bore a striking resemblance to Elly.

Vega hung high above the sea to the east, four hours from setting. Already, a cool breeze had sprung up to temper the fierce heat. Chandra found the short day, the accelerated timescale, hard to accommodate. They had been on Verkerk’s World for almost twenty hours, yet had experienced a night and almost two days. He longed for the familiarities of Bengal Station, where you could get a full day’s work done without the premature arrival of night.

“Jeff,” Chandra called. “We’re here.”

Vaughan hung his head through the gap between the front seats, looking dog-tired. “I’ll never get used to these short nights, Jimmy.”

Chandra smiled. “Tell me about it.”

The city hospital was in the oldest quarter of Vanderlaan, the area constructed thirty years ago by the first wave of colonists. Despite the relative modernity of the old town, the area had the look, with its warmwood buildings bedecked with creepers and blooms, of having been settled for centuries.

They parked outside the hospital and made their way to reception. An officer, Sergeant Hengst, greeted Chandra and Vaughan and ushered them along a corridor. “Lieutenant Laerhaven instructed me to help you however I can, gentlemen,” he said in stilted English.

“We can interview Essex?” Chandra asked.

The sergeant nodded. “He’s showing signs of recovery,” he said. “His doctor says you can have thirty minutes.” He paused. “As a matter of security, and in order to aid our own investigations, I must tell you that your interview will be recorded.”

Chandra looked at Vaughan, who shrugged. “No problem,” Chandra said.

Hengst smiled. “Excellent.”

Vaughan asked, “Have you any idea who might have wanted Essex dead, Sergeant?”

Hengst shook his head. “Our investigations so far have come to nothing. Please, this way.”

He led them into a small room overlooking a garden. The shrunken figure of an old man, not at all the image of the ex-spacer Chandra had expected, lay in a recovery pod. Essex was thin-faced, bald. His thin chest was encased in a glossy layer of synthi-flesh, and from the pale flesh of his arms snaked the leads of a dozen monitors and intravenous tubes.

He stared at Chandra, wide-eyed, as the three men approached the pod. He tried to sit up, but failed and slumped back into the cushioned interior. He said feebly, “If you’ve come to kill me, then kill me!”

Hengst said, “Mr. Essex, officers Chandra and Vaughan are here to interview you. If you could assist them by answering their questions, we would be grateful. If at any time you wish to terminate the interview, just say so. Do you understand?”

Vaughan took a seat beside the pod. He reached out and touched the old man’s arm and said in a surprisingly soft and reassuring voice, “We’re friends, Mr. Essex. We’re police, from Earth.”

Essex’s nervous glance shuttled between Vaughan and Chandra, disbelief evident in his eyes. “You’re not going to kill me?”

“We’re on your side. We’re from Earth, here to investigate what’s been going on. We mean you no harm.”

Hengst whispered, “I’ll be outside if you need me.” He slipped from the room.

Chandra drew up a chair and sat beside Vaughan.

The telepath took a small case from his jacket pocket, withdrew a pin and inserted it into the back of his head. Chandra watched the process with fascination, relieved that he was shielded.

Essex stared at them “I... I’ve been expecting them at any time. That was the most frightening thing, you see. Not knowing when—when they’d turn up and kill me.”

“It’s okay, you’re safe now.” Chandra reached out, took the old man’s hand. “Why are they trying to kill you?” he asked.

Essex licked his trembling lips. “It’s because of what I found out about them, you see. They don’t want it getting out.”

Chandra looked at Vaughan, then asked Essex, “What did you find out?”

Essex nodded, his glance darting between the two men, still distrustful and unable to believe in the luck of his reprieve. “It’s... it’s all so vague...”

“Easy,” Chandra said. “Take it easy and tell us in your own time.”

Essex licked his lips. “I was a well-respected naturalist when I was younger. Specialised in the study of migration patterns of species on newly colonised planets. I worked for some of the biggest space agencies. They didn’t want colonists wreaking havoc on the migration patterns of the native fauna. I charted major routes, so the colonists could avoid the animals.” He trailed off, shaking his head in confusion.

“You and your team explored Verkerk’s World,” Chandra reminded him.

“Verkerk’s World...” Essex repeated the name as if speaking it for the very first time. “Nearly fifty years ago now. New world, you see, new and interesting wildlife. I returned from time to time after the place was colonised, made studies in the northern continent.” He shook his head. “Strange thing. Periodic drop in localised indigenous population of certain species in the northern ranges. Couldn’t explain it. Larger animals, high in the food chain, animals with no natural predators... almost wiped out periodically. It baffled me. I wrote up a paper, published it on Earth, forgot about the whole thing. Lots of work to do out in the Expansion. I didn’t come back to Verkerk’s for years and years.” Again his vision lost focus. He seemed confused as to where he was and why he was speaking of the past. “I was on Earth a few months ago. I looked up Marquez and Bhindra, my exploration colleagues, and we got talking about Verkerk’s and what we found there. That got me thinking. I decided to come back, try to work out what was happening.”

“What did you find?” Chandra prompted. He glanced at Vaughan, who slumped in his seat, eyes closed, his face expressionless as he scanned the old man.

Essex shook his head. “It was a year after the last periodic two-year ‘cull’. Whatever had occurred, I’d missed it. I talked to a few locals, but they were unwilling to tell me anything. I ran tests on the water from the mountains, discovered minute traces of the drug known today as rhapsody. I found it gained in potency every two years. It flows from the north, through the floodplain of Sapphire Falls. Its molecules bind themselves to the cells of certain plants. These plants are harvested by locals—it’s what forms the basis of the cult they have here, the Church of the Adoration. Anyway, that’s by the by. It has no real effect down here, we’re too far away—it’s up there, up in the mountains, where it has its
desired
effect.”

Chandra reached out and touched the old man’s hand. “What effect, Essex?”

He screwed his eyes tight shut, opened them, and stared at a point between the two men. He began shaking his head in a slow, side-to-side motion that Chandra thought might never end. “I’d been visiting the remote mountain communities in the north. It was there I met a sociologist from Vanderlaan, man by the name of Kuivert. He told me he was doing some work on population figures. From time to time we’d meet, go through our findings. One day, he showed up here. He was agitated—no, more like petrified. Had every right to be. He’d been doing some poking around in the mountain communities in the north, checking claims that citizens had moved south. You see, there’s no census here on Verkerk’s. Massive planet. Relatively few settlers, thousands of self-sufficient communes—how many, nobody really knows. So it’s not easy to keep a record of all the comings and goings. But my friend, he produced these figures and claimed that citizens of the northern mountains have been disappearing with the same frequency as the animals up there.”

With shaking fingers he prodded tears from his eyes, took a breath, and continued. “So, six weeks ago, when the periodic disappearances were due to begin, we obtained a sample of some rhapsody and set off up north. You see, there had to be two of us, one to take the stuff, the other to stop him from following the call.”